What air pollution does to India's children

Published: 1 April 2026 | Author: Team JanVayu | Reading time: 4 min

Air pollution is a direct threat to children's health in India. Evidence from the past five years shows that polluted air stunts children's growth, harms their brains and shortens some lives before they have properly begun.

Stunting

A peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management found that a one standard deviation increase in average annual PM2.5 concentrations increases the prevalence of stunting in Indian children by 5 percentage points, and severe stunting by 2.4 percentage points.

India already has one of the highest stunting rates in the world: 35.5 percent of children under five are stunted (NFHS-5, 2019-21). If India met the WHO standard of 5 micrograms per cubic metre, the share of stunted children would fall by 10.4 percentage points.

These are large effects. Stunting in early childhood is largely irreversible. It is linked to weaker immune systems, lower cognitive development and poorer schooling, and in adulthood to a higher risk of hypertension and diabetes. Through stunting, air pollution is setting a generation of Indian children up for worse health for life.

Learning and development

The harm goes beyond physical growth. Research compiled by the WHO links prenatal exposure to high PM2.5 with developmental delays at age three, and with psychological and behavioural problems in later childhood, including symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety and depression.

A working paper from the Institute of Economic Growth in Delhi (Singh, Gupta and Dey, May 2022, IEG Working Paper 452) documented lower maths and reading performance among Indian children aged 8 to 11 exposed to higher PM2.5. A 2019 Brookings India working paper (Singh, Dey, Chowdhury and Bali) found that exposure during the first trimester lowers height-for-age and weight-for-age in children under five.

For families in Delhi, where winter daily PM2.5 regularly peaks above 300 micrograms per cubic metre (the November 2024 monthly average was 249, per CREA), about twenty times the WHO 24-hour guideline of 15, the risks are real.

School closures

Closures add to the damage. Delhi's schools have been shut several times in recent years during the November-to-January pollution season, on government orders triggered when AQI exceeds "severe". In the 2024-25 winter, GRAP Stage IV orders repeatedly suspended physical classes for younger students across Delhi-NCR, beginning on 18 November 2024. Schools moved between closure, hybrid and in-person classes over several weeks (CAQM GRAP orders).

Closures hit children from lower-income families hardest. They are less likely to have an air purifier at home or a device for remote learning. The children most exposed to pollution are also the ones most harmed by the response to it.

Deaths

The Global Burden of Disease India study (Dandona et al., The Lancet, 2020) attributed 8.8 percent (7.0 to 10.3) of under-five deaths in India in 2017 to air pollution. A 2021 Vital Strategies release on a review of 45 studies of air pollution and stunting noted that 90 percent of children and teens under 15 are exposed to harmful pollution.

The Lancet Countdown 2025 places India's annual air pollution death toll at 1.72 million, including deaths of infants and young children.

What is not being done

India's National Clean Air Programme does not include child health outcomes as a performance metric. The programme targets PM10 reductions, not PM2.5, and does not track stunting, cognitive development, school closures, or paediatric respiratory admissions as indicators of success.

We found no national standard for indoor air quality in schools. There is no national programme to provide air filtration in classrooms; Delhi announced on 19 December 2025 that air purifiers would be installed in 10,000 classrooms (The Hindu).

The evidence is causal and quantified: India's air damages children's lungs, brains and growth. Each year without action adds another cohort to the toll, and the national programme does not yet measure the harm to children at all.